“Best ye let her go.” The witch’s mud-filled eyes appeared to swirl in the dimming torchlight—hypnotic. Her slimy lips opened on a sharp-toothed grin so terrifying to gaze upon, Lyra felt her knees weaken. Griselda’s legs actually buckled, yet she managed to maintain balance by using Lyra for a prop. “Without that child, yer kingdom be doomed.” Contrary to her grisly smile, the witch’s voice was solemn and low, like a warning. “King Kiran made a blood pact with Queen Nova . . . that be the peace treaty: his daughter to marry her son when the princess be of age. There be a prophecy, revealed by the dark world’s grand sorceress.” The witch winced at this, then continued on. “Balance, held within the joined hands of a prince and princess who ne’er belonged to their own, but equal to one another in every way. Alone, they’re to conquer one another’s worlds. Once united, each will be complete and embrace their oddities to bring the sun and moon together again. A raven-eyed star-boy forged of sunlight, and a silver-haired songbird girl who commands the shadows. No question who that last one be.” She gestured with her manacled hands, the chains rattling in midair. “The night creatures already deem yer niece worth their fealty.”
Lyra had no time to process the witch’s proclamation of a prophecy or an arranged betrothal, for her mind was on the shadows peeling free from the walls.
Griselda whimpered, dropping Lyra’s hair as the shapeless silhouettes hovered in place, awaiting instruction. Lyra hesitated only long enough to rub her tender scalp, then she nodded. The shadows curled around the dying torches and snuffed out each quivering flame one by one until they all stood in pitch blackness.
The prisoner’s chains jingled and clanged to the floor. Lyra’s eyes lit up, casting amber glares along the walls—tiny searchlights passing over the now-empty manacles and the shadows siphoning out of the keyholes like black smoke. Her gaze stopped at the open door where the prisoner stood free. The witch tipped her head, her obsidian horns reflecting Lyra’s glowing eyes as she pulled her hood into place.
“Thank ye, wee princess.” Her jagged grin stretched to appalling lengths, teeth shimmering yellow. She redirected her attention to Griselda, who’d fallen to her knees upon seeing her smile. “As this child be yer only light in this very dark place, I’d stay on her good side, were I ye.”
With that, the witch leapt from the cell and Lyra closed her eyes, welcoming the darkness once more.
4
To Dine upon Flowers and Flame
While in Eldoria a king’s death was being mourned, in the land of ice, star-filled skies, and midnight, another king struggled to pass from this life and his young son struggled not to hate. Prince Vesper, son of Orion Astraeus and heir to the throne, leaned forward in his saddle. The scent of musk radiated off Lanthe’s purplish-tinged mane. Vesper held the reins loose, guiding his mount with his knees on their climb up a hill. He’d been the one to break the colt, a gift from his kingly father on Vesper’s thirteenth name day, using gentle measures to gain the animal’s trust from the moment it was foaled. Now, two years later, Lanthe responded to Vesper with even the slightest nudge. As they reached the top, Vesper coaxed the reins around and spun them, taking a moment to admire the view below.
“The perfect venue for blood sport, wouldn’t you say, Lanthe?” he asked, and the stallion whickered in answer.
Neverdark—Nerezeth’s arboretum—had always been a beacon in their world of midnight. Other than the lead-glass window in the top that allowed a view of the outer night sky and the blink of dawn occurring once each day, the domed enclosure was forged of solid iron and filled with daylight. Or at least a reasonable facsimile. Thousands upon thousands of fireflies—fed with a special mix of pollen and liquid sunshine smuggled in from the day realm—drifted like infinitesimal stars along the shrine’s curved roof and everywhere the gardens and meadows flourished. Their glimmering strands were comparable to the real sun, though weaker, much like rays peering out from heavy clouds. The homogenized violet-gold light lacked the brilliance to blind tender eyes or irritate moonlit complexions—frailties only Vesper was exempt from—but offered enough fluorescence to nurture herbs and other plants.
These grounds spanned hundreds of acres and, in spite of the emotional weight bearing down on Vesper’s shoulders and chest, he still warmed at the sight of the rolling hills lit up like an overcast spring day. Fragrant meadows with fruit-bearing trees and shrubs stood out in lush shades of lilac and lavender. On the east end, alongside horse pastures and stables, ran gardens of fruits, vegetables, and edible flowers that bloomed all year round, irrigated by melted snow. From where Vesper sat, the saltwater lakes—channeled in from far below where the oceans surrounded the underside of the world—shimmered turquoise and thrived with aquatic creatures that skimmed the surface like luminescent wraiths. When captured and roasted, the glowing fish offered another level of nutrients to the Nerezethite diet. Since there was endless snow to heat for drinking water and bathing, the lakes were never drawn from, and never ran dry.
Joyful birdsongs and the occasional nicker, bellow, or bleat of an animal added to the illusion of life—robust and flourishing. Vesper swallowed back the bitter irony, for this haven that had once nurtured his people was now killing some. The arboretum had been the brainchild of the royal sorceress, Madame Dyadia—along with a handful of Nerezeth’s finest horticulturists centuries earlier—as a means to provide the night realm inhabitants a reprieve from their bleak terrain while offering a frost-free landscape more conducive to harvesting vegetation, training messenger jackdaws, and pasturing livestock.
However, the same manufactured irradiation that tinted the flora shades of purple had begun to have the same effect on hair belonging to animals or humans. The royal horses’ glossy cremello coats were now forever tinted periwinkle from centuries of breeding within the enclosed pastures. On the tail of that discovery, certain citizens began to show an intolerance to the vegetation grown within the homogenized light—a lung malaise that ultimately caused death.
The panacea roses of Eldoria’s terrain—a flower that grew only above-ground in wild, pure, undomesticated sunlight—were key in countering the effects. A medicinal tea, brewed from the roots, had been keeping King Orion and others alive. Now the roses were extinct. All of them uprooted and dead at King Kiran’s hand. Thanks to the war, a month had passed since the roses were laid waste, unprotected in bundles that withered in Eldoria’s harsh sunlight. The roots—rotten and unsalvageable—could no longer be planted to grow a new supply.
A hot rush of rage seared Vesper’s flesh beneath his royal riding vestments. He forced his gaze to the latticework edifice in the distance: the shrine wherein laid his lord father’s inert form. Surrounding the gazebo-styled structure, an assemblage of guards and citizens, laden with furs, waited to escort the royal family back to the castle through the tundra outside once they’d said their good-byes to the king. Some in the group sang haunting hymns to the stars.
Vesper sought his best friend among the crowd of silvery hair and moonlit complexions. Cyprian’s black-and-silver surcoat was easy to spot, being new and crisp, as he’d only recently made the guard. Their gazes met across the distance and Cyprian sent a mental query that Vesper refused to acknowledge. Instead, the prince willed the entire captive audience to look his way. He wanted their attention for this grand gesture, since the next one would be performed in solitude. No one ever expected their strange prince, night-blind, dark-haired, copper-skinned and bedeviled, to do what was right. Many had expected the worst of him since his birth, and he’d done his best not to let them down. He would give them one final impulsive act before proving them wrong.
In a clearing at the bottom of the hill waited a figure—draped in a makeshift king’s robe of Eldoria’s colors with a rope cinched about its neck just beneath its bulbous head. Vesper had no lance; didn’t need one. The warriors of his world used their bodies as weapons against the monsters that threatened their livelihood. Focused on the object of his scorn, he pictured King Kiran. Vesper had seen him at a distance when the man came to propose a treaty to his queenly mother. He remembered every angle of his sun-burnished face, every tumble of dark hair, every flash of white teeth. He remembered it as vividly as the wheezing suction of his own lord father’s dying gasps.
Someone had taken the Eldorian king’s life before Vesper could. Contrary to rumor, no Night Ravagers had been involved. They were only sent above-ground in search of Nerezethite criminals. They never involved themselves in war.
None of it mattered. For despite that the sunking received his due reward, Vesper still ached for justice.
“Are you ready to fly, Lanthe?” he asked. The stallion’s ears twitched eagerly.
Shifting in the saddle, the prince raised a gloved fist and shouted, “For King Orion! Long live the moon and stars!” He squeezed his knees and an enthusiastic nicker burst from Lanthe’s throat as together they took the plunge.
Down the hill they raced, Vesper’s fury spiking his pulse to a thundering roar that matched his mount’s hoofbeats. Clumps of grass, torn from the ground, flung upward and pelted them. Lanthe’s harsh rhythm jarred Vesper’s bones, a pain that fed his resolve. He narrowed his eyes against the updraft of wind whipping through his shoulder-length hair.